


Compulsion

by weakinteraction



Category: Original Work
Genre: Consensual Mind Control, F/F, Kink Exploration, Magical Artifacts, Sex Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-19 09:39:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10637217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction
Summary: Two witches experiment with a powerful artifact: a necklace that compels the wearer to obey their lover.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LeFeuNoir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeFeuNoir/gifts).



The surface of the necklace was smooth and cold under Felicity's fingertips as she tried to draw forth its secrets. The candle flames of her pentagram flickered in reflection in each curve and spiral of its intricate silvery filigree. And yet it was the shifting, almost smoky patterns in the jewel in the pendant that held her attention longest. Superficially, it looked like an amethyst, but if it had ever been a common mineral it had long ago undergone an alchemical transformation. As she gazed into its depths, she began to feel a strong compulsion to pick up the necklace and put it on. The desire to surrender to the urge was growing stronger, but she resisted -- they still had no idea what it was.

"Fliss?" Marie's voice sounded like a distant echo. She was only a few feet away, but with Felicity deep in her psychometric trance everything outside the pentagram was shadowy and unreal. "Are you all right?"

The candles blew themselves out, in sympathy with Felicity's distracted attention, plunging the room into darkness. "Now look what you've done," she said.

"Hold on," Marie said. She fished her phone out of her pocket and a moment later had it in flashlight mode. Felicity shrank from the bright light, reflexively putting an arm across her breasts. "You weren't so self-conscious a moment ago," Marie said amusedly as she knelt down to help start the laborious process of relighting the candles. She passed one of the lighters to Felicity, who twisted away even as she took it to avoid giving Marie too direct a view.

"It's not my fault my power works best when I'm naked," Felicity said. "Besides, candlelight is a lot more forgiving of imperfections."

At that, Marie leaned into the pentagram and kissed her. "You don't have any imperfections," she said earnestly.

Felicity laughed off the over-the-top compliment and carried on lighting candles. Soon, enough were burning brightly that Marie could turn the phone's light off again. A little while after that, the pentagram was nearly complete once more. "Stand back," she warned Marie.

A few months ago, Marie had been caught inside the pentagram, when they had been trying to identify a Regency ritual mask. The experience -- Felicity thought of it now, rather melodramatically, even by her own standards, as "the incident" -- had been overwhelming: Marie's entire history unfolding in her mind at just a gentle brushing of fingers. They never talked about it, but she felt sure that Marie had been able to feel it, all her darkest secrets and most intimate memories being drawn out of her without either of them being in control of the process. The knowledge Felicity had unwillingly, unwittingly gained -- everything from what had happened to Marie's brother that day at the lake, to exactly what Marie had got up to with her previous lovers -- had informed their relationship, or at least her view of it, but they never, ever spoke of it directly. And from then on, they had always, always made sure Marie was outside the pentagram when she began.

As Marie retreated, Felicity focused on the necklace again. She looked beyond the surface associations -- the antiques dealer who had brought it into the magic shop this morning, uncertain what to do with it but sure they would find it more valuable than any other potential customer; the old lady whose yard sale he had come across it in, who had kept it in the back of a closet for decades; her grandmother, a half-century dead, who had had it on display as a conversation piece, but who had always been too afraid to try it on; and _her_ grandmother, who had been bequeathed it in the will of the noble witch she had served all her adult lifetime in one role or another.

The necklace's memories unfolded rapidly now. It was older than she had imagined from the style: perhaps it had been reworked. For centuries it had been passed down the generations in a family with strong wizarding genes: a very particular gift from mother to daughter on the occasion of a handfasting. And its origins: made by a mage of the court in feudal times, intended for one purpose but quickly discovered to have quite another.

"It's under a powerful geas," Felicity said. Marie said her voice sounded ghostly at times like this, and it almost felt to her this time as though she was being possessed by the necklace's earliest owners. "The wearer is ... compelled to obey." Images unfolded in Felicity's mind that made her acutely conscious of her nakedness. The mage who had made it wearing it, herself stripped bare, kneeling before another woman. And now an audience before the queen, the necklace hidden under her robe, the other woman -- the chief of the royal bodyguards, Felicity realised -- smirking at the power she had but was not currently using. Pushed up against the cold stone wall of the castle, her cunt spasming around her lover's fingers as she was brought to another orgasm--

Felicity let go of the necklace, and its history receded, though the effect on Felicity herself was not so easily shaken off. Her heart was racing, she had goosebumps all over, and she could feel in the wetness of her pussy a distant echo of the mage's orgasm she had just experienced.

"What _is_ that thing?" Marie asked, the smile on her face making it clear that she was just as aware of Felicity's arousal as she was herself.

"Very powerful indeed," Felicity answered, waving her hands on either side to bid the candles to blow themselves out.

Marie turned the lights back on, revealing that all along they had just been in the back room of the shop. "Special collection, then?" she said lightly.

Felicity nodded. She felt both relieved and disappointed as she watched Marie reach down to take the necklace -- it was just an object to her, after all -- and lock it away in the safe where they kept the few items that had come into their possession over the years which they had felt were too dangerous to resell, too difficult to dethaumaturgise, and which they didn't trust anyone else to dispose of properly either.

"Take me to bed," Felicity said as she stood up.

"Sure thing, honey," Marie said. "I know how this always takes it out of you." She brought over Felicity's gown and held it out for her to put her arms in.

Felicity batted it away, instead drawing Marie in close for a kiss. "I said, _take me to bed_."

"Ohhhh," Marie said. And then, more positively, "Sure thing, honey."

* * *

They landed on the bed with Felicity above Marie. She brushed her hair out of the way and leaned down for a kiss. Marie wasted no time in grabbing hold of her hips and pulling her even closer.

"That thing really did a number on you, didn't it?" Marie said. "You're not normally so ... forward."

Felicity stopped. "Is that a bad-- Sorry," she said.

"No, no, I like it," Marie said. "Believe me, I like it."

"I'm so turned on, you wouldn't believe."

Marie's hand snaked around from Felicity's hip to her pussy. "I really would, Fliss." The heel of her hand pushed up against Felicity's mound as two of her fingers slid inside her. "You know, I think you should explain to me what exactly you found out about that necklace."

Felicity gasped, half from pure stimulation and half from the similarity between the feeling of Marie's fingers inside her and the bodyguard pushing her -- no, wait, the mage of the court -- up against the wall of the castle corridor. "It was a long time ago," she managed to say eventually. "Castles and royalty and all that."

"It belonged to a queen?"

"No, the--" Felicity shuddered as Marie found her G-spot and began to stroke it. "The queen's mage. And her bodyguard. They were-- Oh, goddess, keep doing that."

"This?" Marie slowed down but didn't stop, a deliberate tease.

"That." The feeling was intense, but Felicity was desperate for more. "Please."

"You said keep doing this, and I'm doing it."

"You were doing it a lot faster a moment ago," Felicity said, hating the wheedling tone in her voice even as she said it.

Marie chuckled. "I don't want to make you come before you've finished the story. Is that so wrong of me?"

"I guess not."

"Tell you what--" Suddenly, Marie had somehow grabbed hold of her and rolled her over onto her back. "Why don't you lie back and tell me the story?"

Felicity had always liked how strong Marie was when she wanted to be, and not just in the magical arts. "This feels familiar," Felicity said. "Only isn't it usually you telling the story?"

It felt as though everything stopped and the temperature had dropped markedly, even as Marie's fingers were still inside her, her hips still bucking upwards. Felicity mentally cursed herself: they _hadn't_ done that since the incident. She'd been too carried away in her arousal to deal with tiptoeing around the landmines.

But then Marie's fingers began again. "Tell me the story," she said mildly.

"The mage and the bodyguard were lovers. I think the necklace was a gift, of a kind."

"The bodyguard surrendering herself to the mage?" Marie said, curling her fingers just so as she spoke. "Sounds interesting."

Felicity's back arched as she continued to speak. "The other way around. The mage was the one-- Ah! She gave herself, I suppose. The necklace was just the means ... Oh, Marie, don't stop."

"I'm not going to, my love. Just surrender to my touch, give yourself to me." Her fingers were thrusting urgently now, forcing Felicity to ever greater heights of arousal. Marie mirroring the story with her own dirty talk should have concerned her, given the complexities of their relationship, but in that moment it was just more arousing, as though she was reading her mind that Felicity wanted nothing more than to be the mage.

She came, hard, and fell asleep to Marie's gentle kisses on her forehead.

* * *

Her dreams were not her own. She felt herself at the mercy of both the magical force of the necklace and a lover whose tenderness was that of someone who knew that they could not be refused. In the dream, she took on the appearance of Marie, but even in this altered state of consciousness, Felicity knew that that was wrong, that these memories belonged to someone else.

But then again, were they really that distinguishable from her secret fantasies? The fact that she had been too shy to want to explore some of Marie's kinkier suggestions when they had first got together haunted her still: it had stayed on the level of fantasy, the sort of thing Marie would whisper in her ear just before she came -- no, to _make_ her come. Until the incident, when Felicity's psychometry had given her first hand experience of exactly how far Marie had gone with others before her. Since then, Marie had tried to assure her, indirectly, that she had chosen Felicity for many reasons, and that she was perfectly happy with their sex life, but what Felicity could never admit out loud was that she wanted more.

The dreams twisted, and twisted again, until the memories were fantasies and the fantasies were memories. A mage and a bodyguard running a magic shop together and two modern witches in the royal court. And in both situations, one submitting to the other through the power of the necklace.

As the dream faded into incoherence, Felicity's last impression was only of the necklace itself, the way light and smoke and shadow played in the depths of the purple stones.

* * *

When Felicity woke from the confusing tangle of dreams, Marie was gone. For a moment, Felicity panicked that last night had freaked her out, either her "forwardness" or the way she had inadvertently stepped on the unacknowledged third rail of their relationship. Then she saw the message scrawled in lipstick on the dressing table mirror: "Thought I should let you sleep. See you when I get back from the festival. Love you always. X" She had completely forgotten that Marie was taking a selection of their wares to the local music festival. They usually made as much in that one long weekend as in a normal month.

The shop was predictably quiet: many of their regular customers, and almost anyone who might normally pop in out of curiosity or the sheer desire to gawk, were at the festival too. All of which left Felicity with rather more time to think than she would have liked in the circumstances. It felt as though the necklace locked in the safe in the back room was calling to her. More than once, she put the "back in five minutes" sign up on the door, and headed in there. The first few times, she stopped as soon as she saw the safe, chiding herself and heading back into the shop proper. But as the day wore on, she found herself fingering the key in her pocket, staring at the safe as though she had X-ray vision. At first, the thought of the other items in there -- the eldritch wand, the cursed ring -- was enough to give her pause. But by the time she was shutting up the shop, she already had out on the counter the materials to do another psychometry reading.

Laying out the pentagram of candles carefully, she felt a last pang of self-doubt. It wasn't that she hadn't done this by herself before -- until she'd met Marie, she'd never let anyone be there with her when she went into the trance, foolish as that now seemed -- but the power of the memories associated with it had been almost overwhelming.

Still, she felt that she had to know more. Last night's confused dreams had given her hints but no real answers. Even as she took the necklace from the safe, she could feel it thrumming in her fingers even without the benefit of trance or ritual. A puissant artifact indeed.

She placed it carefully in the centre of the pentagram and lit the candles. Then she turned off the lights so that the flickering candle flames were the only illumination, and removed her clothes. In the past when had done this alone, this had always been a perfunctory part of the process, albeit the one that made her unwilling to do it with others. Even with Marie, there had been nothing specifically sexual about it. But now, despite being alone in a darkened room, Felicity felt as though she was putting on a performance, though whether it was for an imagined Marie, or the necklace itself somehow, she couldn't be certain. She slowly removed each item of clothing before finally kneeling inside the pentagram.

Once more, she stared into the shifting depths of the crystals. Reaching out to touch it was automatic; Felicity was only really aware that she was doing so when she saw the distorted reflection of her hand in the silver of the necklace out of the corner of her eye.

* * *

The surface history, already familiar, stripped away quickly.

 _Back,_ Felicity willed. _All the way back._ She felt as though she was plummeting downwards, even though her distant senses told her she was still knelt on the solid floor of the back room.

And then everything went away and she was inhabiting the past more vividly and completely than she ever had before. She was gazing down at the necklace with satisfaction: the enchantment seemed to have taken, though there would be no way of knowing for sure until she tried it.

 _Is this how it feels for Marie?_ Felicity wondered, fighting to retain her own consciousness against the impressions the necklace retained from its creator ... and first owner. That was odd, come to think of it. Felicity dove deeper.

Her name was Adastra, she knew now, an acolyte of Hecate-in-Exile, mirroring her goddess's status by working at the court of an Alixian queen. If the power that the necklace had retained down the centuries hadn't made it clear enough, the sense of raw thaumaturgical energy running through her was certain proof that she was a powerful sorceress indeed.

 _No._ was Felicity, a 21st century witch with a perfectly coherent syncretism in which Hecate, Alix and all the rest were both aspects of the same all-encompassing feminine principle, thank you very much. She ran a magic shop with Marie and actively avoided drawing too much thaumaturgical essence to herself, as all reasonable magic users had since the Third Compact in the seventeenth century. She definitely didn't feel jealous of this ancient enchantress, able to draw on power she and Marie could only dream of, living as she did in a time when the global population was so much smaller.

Maybe just a little jealous, then.

Acknowledging the feeling, however unworthy it seemed, centred Felicity again. But the question of Adastra's power became if anything more puzzling. It seemed she had voluntarily yoked it with the necklace, putting it at the service of the bodyguard. Without Felicity having to force the process at all, a thread of memory unravelled to yield her name: Verina.

And then, suddenly, Verina was at the entrance to her -- no, Adastra's, Felicity reminded herself -- private chambers. Few in the court had such privileges to enter unannounced, and fewer still would have been welcome. But Adastra turned to her with a smile.

"And what exactly are you cooking up now?" Verina said. Felicity was conscious that Verina was the one who had been replaced by Marie in her dreams: could she really be sure that 

"Something that will put your suspicions to rest once and for all," Adastra replied, picking up the necklace -- for a single disorientating moment, Felicity was aware of her own hand on it, back in the real world -- and holding it up to show her.

"It's not really my style," Verina said. "And I'm not so easily bought."

The back and forth seemed familiar, easy, but there was a genuine edge to it. Adastra's memories told Felicity that Verina had never fully trusted her since her arrival at court three years ago. This in itself did not make her unusual -- her failure to even pay lip service to Greater Alix's beneficence was offputting to most of the more ostentatiously pious courtiers, though the Serene Majesty herself treated it as little more than an amusing affectation. But Verina's suspicion was of a more worldly nature: she found it implausible that a wandering witch of such power would simply show up one day and put herself at the service of the Queen, and therefore concluded that she must be a spy. The more they worked together successfully, defeating invasion and intrigue alike, the more complex and involved the game Verina presumed she was playing became, the greater and more distant the power she must be in the service of.

"It's not a gift," Adastra said. "It's for me to wear, not you."

"Then I really don't understand," Verina said.

"I've enchanted it so that the person wearing it can only speak the truth. I will put it on and happily submit to any question at all you wish to put to me."

"Any question?"

"Any question," Adastra said. "I will tell the truth, as I always have, whenever you have asked me directly or indirectly about even your most outlandish speculations. But perhaps this time you will believe me."

"Why should I?" Verina said. "After all, I only have your word that this enchantment exists at all, let alone that it works as you say. Perhaps you have enchanted it so that whatever words you speak while it is on are more persuasive than usual. After all"--she put her hand to Adastra's neck and it felt to Felicity as though there was someone in the room with her--"it does hang around where your voice is made, and you are persuasive enough at any time."

"Very well," Adastra said. "Perhaps you should wear it. Just for a moment, so that you can be convinced. And then you will be convinced by everything else."

"A moment?"

"I will ask you one question only, and you will see that you can only answer it truthfully."

Verina took the necklace from her and put it around her own neck. It really didn't suit her, Felicity thought, barely fitting around her muscular frame, the delicacy of its design in stark contrast to her almost aggressively simple uniform. The memories told Felicity that Verina had a much more elaborate one for state occasions that befitted her status, but that she hated wearing it.

Verina was wearing the necklace now, Felicity belatedly realised, so she had begun to experience things from her point of view. She had never had such a deep psychometric experience before: usually the information she gleaned was like smoke seen in a mirror. More rarely, she picked up momentary impressions, as she had when she first scryed the necklace. This was something else again: was it the power that Adastra had invested the necklace with, connecting with her own?

"Go on then," Verina said. "Ask your question."

Adastra gave a wicked smile. "Are you attracted to me?"

"Yes," Verina said, surprised to hear the word out loud even as she thought it.

"You would never normally admit that, and we both know it," Adastra said triumphantly, leaning up on tiptoes to remove the necklace. At that moment, Felicity's awareness blurred between the two, her own fingertips on the necklace linked across the ages to Adastra's and to Verina's skin underneath it. She was aware of what even they weren't fully at that point: that that one admission had completely changed things, for both of them. For all Adastra's outward flippancy, she had not been at all certain that Verina saw her that way. For Verina, it felt as though she was being ensnared yet more by a dangerous individual, and she distrusted how little she seemed to mind.

Perhaps that explained why, when Adastra did indeed put the necklace on, Verina questioned her for a considerable time about all the things she had always doubted. Felicity let her grip on the necklace loosen slightly, and everything became less distinct. Lengthy discussions blurred together, covering Adastra's motivations in coming to the court on the first place (a hard luck tale that had put her in need of a new home well away from the realm of her birth), her loyalty to the Queen (unimpeachable, as even Verina eventually had to admit), and finally repeated denials of being an agent of just about every potentate Verina had ever heard of, and a few more that Adastra knew to be mythical.

Felicity's attention was caught again, though, when Verina echoed Adastra's sole question: "Are you attracted to me?"

She pulled the necklace closer to her, to fully experience the thrill running through Adastra as she said, just as Verina had, the single word "Yes."

"Then kiss me," Verina said, and Felicity was fully aware of Adastra's shock, and her secret delight, at discovering that not only did she want to, as she had for years, but that she couldn't refuse. It was only in this moment, Felicity could tell, that Adastra realised that she had made a far more powerful enchantment than she had intended. Felicity was well aware of the risks of doing such workings without being clear as to the intent, not least from the lengths Marie went to to centre herself before crafting even the most insignificant trinket. But Adastra had lived long before such ideas had been formalised. Or perhaps, as powerful as she was, she had never considered the possibility that her own mind might prove to be more powerful still.

Verina kissed her back passionately, and very soon picked Adastra up and placed her on her own workbench. "Take off your clothes," she growled, and Adastra once again complied, compelled under a geas of her own making to do that which she would have willingly done anyway.

Verina, perhaps used to being obeyed, albeit not by Adastra, had taken longer than Felicity would have expected to catch on to what was happening. But by the time she was ordering Adastra to crawl around the room on her hands and knees for her entertainment, occasionally giving her backside a casual slap, Felicity was fairly sure she had realised. She felt as though her own arse was stinging, as well as Adastra's.

"Is there anything you won't do if I ask you?" Verina said eventually, when Adastra had finished kissing her feet.

"Nothing," Adastra said. "Not while I'm wearing the necklace."

"I thought as much. Was that always your intent?"

"No, not at all. Compulsion to tell the truth, that was all I wanted."

"All you knew you wanted," Verina said. She might not be magical herself, it seemed to Felicity, but her job did require her to read people well.

"I suppose, knowing that the intended audience for that truth was you, it's possible the extent of the compulsion was rather more than I anticipated," Adastra said.

"Kiss me again," Verina said, and Adastra rose to her feet in order to do so. Verina kissed her back, with a tenderness that completely belied the rough sex they had just been having.

"You know that I'd have done most of those things even if I wasn't wearing it, don't you?" Adastra felt as though the words were spilling out of her, but whether it was the compulsion of the necklace or just her own desperation to admit it, Felicity didn't think even Adastra knew.

"Yes, I do," Verina said. "But I think I'm going to want you to wear it fairly often. That is, if you want?" Her hands stopped just before Adastra's neck, ready to remove the necklace but frozen in place. "I think you'd better answer that while I can still be sure."

"I want that more than anything," Adastra said. "I want to be yours forever."

Verina smiled, but as she did so she removed the necklace and the connection was weakened. The awareness of all the things they had done was already there in her mind, but she felt as though now she would be able to explore each and every encounter from Adastra's point of view if she chose to. The small part of her that was still knelt on a cold tiled floor in the back room of a magic shop, eight hundred years in the future, managed to assert enough control to avoid the risk of losing herself in the trance forever. Reluctantly, Felicity let go of the necklace.

* * *

And she was back in the present, almost shaking at the intensity of the experience. She took a few deep breaths and then carefully blew out the candles one by one, with each one saying aloud a significant memory of her own, rebuilding her own identity. When she had first begun to explore her gift seriously, she had performed this part of the ritual very carefully every time, but it had been years now since she had felt the need to. But none of her experiences had ever been as vivid as that, nor given her so much insight into the minds of others long dead.

Felicity put it away carefully in the safe, next to the other dangerous artifacts -- and she had no doubt that it was just that -- but as soon as she did she felt the urge to unlock it again. She forced herself to walk slowly away, not even bothering to dress as she left.

Standing in the corridor that ran between the shop, the storage areas downstairs, and the stairs up to their flat, with the door of the back room firmly closed behind her, Felicity at last began to regain fuller control of herself. The effects of the trance were fading, but she was still extremely turned on from her sharing of Adastra's experiences.

Glancing at the door to check that her memory of locking it was correct -- it felt like it had happened in another lifetime -- she headed up to the bedroom, grabbing the phone on the way.

"Tell me about spanking," she said when Marie answered.

"Fliss? Are you OK?"

"I want you to tell me all your fantasies," Felicity said. "All of them." 

"Oh, that one? Yes, that's my own. Charmed to bring luck to whoever you give it to." Shit, Felicity thought, Marie was still working the stall. "No, not you. It doesn't work quite like that, I'm afraid." Felicity could well imagine that whoever Marie was talking to was probably busy talking their companion into buying it for them. "Oh, no, don't worry, it's just my partner back at the shop. She's ... er, doing the accounts."

"Marie ..."

"Yes, that's fine," Marie said to Felicity. "You _whip_ the _rough_ figures into shape, and I'll phone you back later so that I can get _on top_ of all the details."

"Tease," Felicity said.

"Sorry, you're breaking up," Marie said, and the line went dead.

Felicity let the phone fall out of her hands. If she had had anything like Adastra's power, she felt certain it would have exploded under the baleful glare she gave it.

She tried to take mental stock of the situation. Had she really just said that to Marie? Had Marie really just responded in that way? It was slightly frightening, but very arousing. Without even realising she was doing it, Felicity began to stroke herself. Inchoate visions like the ones that had assailed her in her dreams flitted through her mind, identities blurring together. Adastra and Felicity; Verina and Marie.

The phone rang and Felicity grabbed it instantly. "So, did you want to talk about the accounts?" she said, doing her best to fake insouciance.

"Hell, no," Marie said. "I'm fairly sure I've made more today than we have since New Year." She paused. "This is all about the necklace, isn't it?"

"I may have scryed it again," Felicity admitted.

"Fliss!" Marie sounded genuinely shocked. "You know--"

"Of course I know. But, Marie, listen, it was the most intense one I've ever done. Ever."

"I think I want to wear it for you," Felicity said.

"We don't ... play with the items in the Special Collection, Fliss," Marie said. But Felicity could hear excitement in her voice, all the same.

"I want to know how it feels, for myself," Felicity said. "And-- I've always wanted those things. From you. For you. I've just been ... too scared, I think."

"But messing with powerful magic will make it scary for both of us, so that's OK?"

"That's not what I said."

Marie sighed. "I really don't think this is a conversation we should be having over the phone."

"But we are."

"I'll be home tomorrow night," Marie said after a pause.

"And we can talk about it then?"

"And you can wear it for me then."

* * *

Felicity reached out and took the necklace from the safe, putting it on around her neck. After all the anticipation, nothing felt different. She was still her, still Felicity. Sure, she was turned on, but she had been before she'd put it on.

"Come over here," Marie said. "Let me see."

Now there was something new: a stinging sensation at each jewelled point. Her mistress -- she wasn't used to thinking of Marie as "mistress", that was new too -- had given her a command, and it must be obeyed. Without even being aware she was doing it, she turned and crossed the room quickly. When she was standing in front of Marie, she tilted her neck back to give her a good view of the necklace ... and her cleavage. Marie gave an approving smile that sent a thrill through Felicity.

"OK, now take it off," Marie said.

Felicity wanted to protest that they hadn't actually _done_ anything yet. But she had been given an order, so she was already fumbling with it. "I'm sorry, I don't think I can."

"Hmmm." Marie stepped around to stand behind her. Felicity was hyper-aware of her breath on her neck, the feel of her fingers as she undid the clasp easily. "It must be part of the enchantment," she said, as she pulled it away from Felicity's neck. "Once you put it on, only I can take it off. Interesting." Felicity twisted round, to see her running a finger over each of the jewels in turn, feeling the power thrumming through them.

"Do you have to treat this like a science project?"

"Magic project," Marie corrected automatically, as she walked back around to stand in front of her. "And really, Fliss, you should know me better than to think I wouldn't be trying to work out the thaumaturgy behind this. We're not all blessed with your psychometric gifts, after all."

"I was rather looking forward to being unable to say no to you, you know," Felicity said quietly.

Marie kissed her, then, a long kiss that started tender and became increasingly possessive, finishing with her teeth nipping Felicity's lower lip in between them. "Good," she said when they finally broke apart, as she suddenly put the necklace up against Felicity's skin. But try as she might, she couldn't get it to close. "Ohhhh," she said after a moment. "I think you have to do this part."

Felicity put her hands over Marie's, finding the clasp. Before she could close it, though, Marie stopped her. "Are you sure you want to do this? Now that you've experienced what it feels like with it on, I mean."

Felicity's only answer was to close the clasp.

Once again, nothing changed, and yet everything did. When she looked at Marie, it wasn't just with the adoration that she always felt for her: brilliant witch, inventive lover, her anchor in the storms of life. There was something more there: the sure and certain knowledge that this person deserved not just that but to be worshipped, and obeyed in all things.

Marie started to unbutton Felicity's blouse. "You could order me to do that, you know," Felicity said.

"But I _want_ to do it myself," Marie said, pulling off one sleeve and then the other and letting it fall to the floor. "And I see you can still speak your mind."

"Unless you order me not to, I suppose," Felicity said.

"Oh, I wouldn't want that," Marie said, lowering Felicity's trousers. Felicity was acutely aware that she was standing before Marie in only her underwear and the high heels that still left her two inches shorter. And the necklace, of course.

Casually, Marie slid her hand directly into the waistband of her panties. Usually Felicity would have squirmed at such a direct approach with so little foreplay. "You're very turned on," Marie commented. "Were you this turned on before?"

Felicity nodded. "I've been thinking about this all day."

"Did you stroke yourself?"

Felicity said nothing.

"I command you to answer," Marie said.

"Yes, Mistress," Felicity said. "There was no one in the shop for ages -- you know what it's like on Sundays even without the festival on. So I snuck off upstairs."

"Did you come?" Marie slid two fingers inside Felicity and started to pump them slowly back and forward. Felicity thrilled to the way her mistress knew her body so well.

"Very hard, Mistress."

"And what were you-- Wait, why are you calling me Mistress? You've never called me that before."

"It just ... slipped out," Felicity said.

"The necklace makes you think of me that way?"

"I think so," Felicity said. "Or maybe it makes me be honest that that's what I want to think of you as."

"Honest with me, or honest with yourself?"

"Both, I think."

"I'll stop if you don't want me to."

"Of course you will," Marie said. "But I rather think I like it." She kissed her again, fiercely, sliding her fingers further up inside to meet Felicity's G-spot as she did, eliciting a gasp. "In fact," she said, as she resumed the same slow pumping motion as before, "I want you to address me as 'Mistress' from now on, without fail."

"Yes, Mistress," Felicity said.

"So, tell me what you were thinking about when you stroked yourself," Marie said.

"You, Mistress. Not being able to say no to you. All the things you might have me do. All the things that you might do to me, helpless to resist you, bound to obey your every command."

"Such as?"

"Tying me up, Mistress. Spanking me."

"Intriguing ideas. Are you close?"

"Very, very close, Mistress." Felicity's entire awareness was shrunk down to just Marie: her words, and her fingers inside her.

"Are you going to come hard like you did earlier?"

"Yes, Mistress."

" _Don't_ ," Marie said, and suddenly Felicity's awareness of her body twisted: now she was concentrating with all her might on preventing herself from coming, despite being so extremely turned on. And yet still, Marie continued to fingerfuck her in the same steady rhythm.

Soon, despite her best efforts, Felicity felt an orgasm coursing through her. She buckled at the knees and Marie had to hold her upright. "I'm sorry, Mistress," Felicity said when she had recovered enough to speak. "I couldn't--"

Marie kissed her again. "Don't worry about it," she said. "I had a feeling that would happen."

"You did, Mistress?"

"It proves my theory: that the necklace directs your _conscious_ mind to obey me," Marie said. "But some things happen on entirely other levels. You could resist the urge to come by an act of will, but not completely subdue it. Not against my expertise, anyway," she added with a smirk. Then she mused, "Or at least, not yet."

"What do you mean, Mistress?"

"I could train you, my love," Marie said. "Using the necklace, or not, depending. Until your orgasms were entirely under your control -- or rather, under mine. Would you like that?"

This was the sort of conversation that Felicity would usually avoid by any means necessary, up to and including jumping out of the window. But the necklace wouldn't let her fail to answer a direct question. "I don't know, Mistress. A large part of me thinks it sounds very sexy, but it seems a bit scary too."

"That's how you've always felt about all this, though, isn't it?"

"Yes, Mistress."

"We can talk about it another time," Marie said. "We still have all of tonight, and there's a lot more I want to find out about how this thing works."

"Yes, Mistress."


End file.
